This post was first featured on A Backwards Story on April 27, 2012 during the second Fairy Tale Fortnight.

This
year for the event's 5th Anniversary, older posts will be pulled out
from the archives and given a brand-new coat of paint as "In Case You
Missed It" features!

Next month, mother/daughter team Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer are coming out with a sequel to their debut YA novel BETWEEN THE LINES entitled OFF THE PAGES. I really wanted to brush off this interview and bring new fans into the series!

Jodi Picoult is the best-selling author of several novels. BETWEEN THE LINES marks her debut into both YA and fantasy.Samantha
van Leer is still in high school, but has had a flair for writing her
entire life. BETWEEN THE LINES is her brainchild.

An interview with Jodi Picoult & Samantha van Leer

~Jodi~

The
fantastic elements of BETWEEN THE LINES break from the straight-forward
elements of your adult novels, yet also makes sense when considering
your off-the-beaten-track releases for WONDER WOMAN and OVER THE MOON,
not to mention the comic-book elements in THE TENTH CIRCLE. How
difficult was it transitioning into such a mythical world? Will you
write more titles in this vein?

JP:
The main reason I went down the path of a young adult novel was because
I have a very creative young adult in my household who conceived the
idea - my daughter. This is a very different genre than what I do for
adult fiction, but that's okay - there are a lot of young readers not
quite ready for the emotional content of my usual novels. This one
really speaks to teens - what it's like to not fit into your world; what
it's like to fall for someone you think you'll never have a chance
with, etc. What made the transitioning hard was that I was
simultaneously writing this book with Sammy AND writing my own 2013
novel about the Holocaust. Believe me, it was tough to go from 1941
Poland to the world of BETWEEN THE LINES. As for writing more YA novels
-- who knows! If my daughter wanted to, I'd be thrilled to have that
experience with her again.

How
hard has it been to collaborate and co-write a novel, having published
nineteen novels on your own? Do you think you'll co-write again in the
future?

JP:
It was an experience I've never had -- not even when I was working on
Wonder Woman and collaborating with a penciller and an inker and an
editor. Sometimes when Sammy and I were writing it was as if we were
asleep and having the same dream -- we would literally be saying the
same sentence out loud. I felt like she could see what was in my head,
and that we were both scrambling to be the first to say it. I don't know
if it's because our minds create similarly, or because she's part of my
genetic makeup -- but it was a remarkable and exhilarating experience.
Sammy has an innate sense of conflict and character that makes her a
blast to work with. I may collaborate in the future but I doubt it will
be as seamless as it was with my own child.

What is/are your favorite fairy tale(s)? What draws you to them?

JP:
I am a big fan of The Little Mermaid. But I like the Disney version,
because in the Hans Christian Andersen one she dies. I'm a big fan of
star-crossed love as a book plot, and you can't get any more
star-crossed than a relationship between a hot prince and a glorified
fish.

~Samantha~

You
came up with the initial idea of BETWEEN THE LINES. I adore the idea of
the characters in my books having their own lives behind the scenes and
really connected with the book. What was your inspiration?

SVL:
I was daydreaming in French class, actually, and the idea just sort of
popped into my head: what if the characters in books are like actors in a
play, and what if they get to be "themselves" whenever they're not
performing for a reader? Add to that the fact that everyone has had a
crush on a character in a book at some point in her life, and from
there, things began to snowball. I told my mom my idea and to my
surprise, she really liked it and suggested we write it together.

How
did you and your mother come up with the way book characters interacted
with one another when there was no reader around? How did you go about
modifying their personalities and adding that extra dimension that made
reading BETWEEN THE LINES so fascinating?

SVL:
We wanted to make the characters "real" lives different from the roles
they played in the fairytale. So Rapscullio, the villain, had to be a
nice guy. The mermaids, who are creepy and boy-crazy, had to be
feminists full of Girl Power. I think my favorite was Socks, though --
who's a little too self-conscious for his own good. Some of the
personalities developed during editing, too. For example, Frump wasn't a
human under a spell, when we first wrote him. But by giving him that
back story, his pining away for Seraphima made a lot more sense.

If you were a character in a fairy tale novel, who would you be and why?

SVL:
I've actually played an OCD version of Cinderella in a musical…but if I
had to choose, I'd pick the princess from the Princess and the Pea. I
like the way she can't be judged by her appearance, when she first shows
up drenched from the rainstorm. There's more to her than meets the eye!

Jodi
and Samantha, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my
questions. I'm looking forward to purchasing a finished copy of BETWEEN
THE LINES to add to my collection!

Bookworms, don't forget to check out my review of BETWEEN THE LINE and add it to your summer reading list!

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